FO: Glynis

Last week we had to drive from my MIL's house in southeastern Vermont to my parents' new abode in southeastern Maine. As anyone who has ever tried to drive from Vermont to Maine knows, yuh can't get theah from heah.

Well, you can get there, it just takes 5 hours. Or forever, depending on how many children you have in the car with you. The good news is that, even after driving part of the way, I still had time to finish up some socks.

Pattern: Glynis by Cookie A, from Sock Innovation
Yarn: Green Mountain Spinnery Sock Art Forest, 70% wool, 30% Tencel, 400 yds/100 gr
Needles: US size 1/2.25 mm (do I knit socks with anything else? Apparently not)
Gauge: Close enough to the required gauge so as not to have to make any alterations
Comments/mods: Again, a very fast knit from Cookie A. Although, to be fair, I did knit 6 pattern repeats on the leg instead of 9, and the socks are plenty long enough. There is a slight caveat to the leg chart: at the end of row 5 you have to shift the start of the row to the right by one stitch. I managed to notice this before I'd done too much damage, but some others weren't so lucky...

I didn't change anything on the heel flap/gusset/foot at all. There was a small error in my version of the foot chart in row 8, but it was pretty straightforward to figure out (k2tog instead of k3tog). There are some errata for the book available, so for future installments I will check the errata before starting off.

I did change the toe, as promised. Instead of decreasing every other row 12 times, I decreased every third row three times, every other row four times and every row five times. I realize that the mathematicians out there will have noticed that this is more decreases then called for in the pattern. But I've recently taken to reading all grafting instructions as "Decrease to a small number of stitches, cut off your yarn, thread through the remaining stitches and pull tight". This has been necessitated by the fact that a) I have maybe three darning needles left out of some ludicrous number (like 15) and I don't know where they are and b) I cannot remember how to graft to save my life. This is much easier.

The yarn: I liked this yarn less then the yarn I used for the Pomatomuseseses. It felt a bit harsh in my hands, and was a bit stiff to work with, unlike the Forest which was wonderfully supple (and ended up really soft after blocking). I will admit that I have not yet blocked these at all, so they may soften up quite a bit, but in the future I'll stick to the mohair version of GMS sock yarn.

You may have realized that finishing these socks* meant I could start my obsession. Which I did. But that will have to wait for another post...

* Two FO posts in a row with socks? What is the world coming to?

FO: Mermaid Socks*

Now that these have been presented to their new owner, they can be shared with y'all.

Pattern: Pomatomus by Cookie A.
Yarn: Green Mountain Spinnery Sock Art Meadow, 50/50 wool/mohair, 400 yds/100 gr
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm
Gauge: 9 sts/12 rows per inch in stockinette
Start/finish: 7/21 - 8/5/2009
Comments/mods: After several months of doing my own sock patterns, it was a relief to get to follow someone else's directions for a change. These socks were so speedy, in part I think because the lace pattern is so intriguing. I kept knitting to see how it was going to come out next!

The yarn is awesome - it has a similar toothy feel to Araucania Ranco (which I talked about with these socks), and the yarn feels really sturdy. The colors were perfect for Mermaid socks, although it wasn't until I was done that I really noticed all the yellowy-green in there. In any event, the colorway was perfect for sea-type fish-scaly socks. It's tightly plied as well, so the twisted stitches really pop.

The only mod I made was to only do 2 repeats on the leg instead of 3. I always have yarn panic when I do top down socks from one skein of yarn, so I opted for fewer repeats. Turns out I have a whack-load of yarn left, so three repeats would have been just fine. However, the legs would have been really long. I'm not so in to really high socks myself, so I tend not to make them at all. This long leg seems to be a trend, because Glynis (now underway - squee!**) calls for 9 repeats of an 8 row pattern plus an inch of ribbing before the heel flap. I might get 7 repeats if I force myself.

The other mod that I didn't do for these socks but will do for future Cookie socks is to change the toe decreases. These came out really really pointy. They look fine on the foot, but silly otherwise. So I'll switch that up in the future.

In conclusion, really well written pattern, amazing stitch pattern, lovely yarn (wish I could justify getting more!), speedy knit and (hopefully) a happy Mermaid with toast warm tail fins this winter. Win all around.

* What is the plural of Pomatomus anyway?
** Glynis is also speeding along in the same "Wow, this is a cool stitch pattern!" way, thanks to a viewing of GI Jane and Mulan (all in one day!).

More dilemma

So I was just sitting on my mother-in-law's porch, taking advantage of the fact that she took my children off to do some blueberry picking, and knitting away studiously on the Veil of Isis, when something horrible happened.

I finished the yarn. Mind you, I'm knitting this thing out of some lovely alpaca yarn Ironman bought me himself in Peru. I've got 17 balls of the stuff left, so there's plenty of yarn to knit this with. I'm on row 9 of 32 of the edging, so the end is definitely in sight. But the rest of the yarn?

In England. Ha ha ha, say the knitting gods.

Aestlight is still burning a hole in my metaphorical yarn pocket, so the only solution I can come up with is this: I have to finish Glynis before I cast on for the shawl.

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that I finished the first sock and cast on/did the ribbing for the second sock on the plane. The bad news is that I have to finish them in the next few days or hide away somewhere to work on them where someone (stop reading here Mom!) won't see them.

Bah.

(Mostly) FO: Haiku

It seems that all I needed was a leetle bit of encouragement to get this baby done. A carrot on the end of a stick as it were. Just posting my dilemma encouraged me to sit down and whack out the last little bit of garter stitch that was left on the body. One viewing of Batman and some down time with the girls, and there she was...

Boo's Haiku in all it's boxy glory.
Yarn: Lion Brand FIsherman's Wool that I dyed, oh...four years ago? using Wiltons cake dyes. One of my first ever dyeing experiments. I went overboard on the colors a bit - five was too many - and it's been sitting in my stash ever since. I used about 1.5 skeins.
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm straights
Start/finish: 7/7-8/9/09
Gauge: 4.5 stitches/9 rows per inch in garter stitch
Comments/mods: I whizzed through the start of this baby in no time flat, and stalled out with 3 inches of garter stitch left on the body. I guess my need for mindless knitting passed fairly quickly! But I was dying to start the next socks, so I got back on the horse and finished up in just a couple of days. Once the knitting was done, I paused briefly to wind the yarn for the next sock project, and then sewed up the seams and set in the sleeves. I have not yet put any buttons on, but that should be easy to accomplish before it gets cold.

I actually like how the pooling turned out on this, splitting into yellow/brown and pink/orange sections with the green bleeding over into each. Unfortunately, novice dyer that I was, I didn't quite rinse the yarn enough, and after each session with this stuff my fingers were a lovely fuschia color. That might also have contributed to the lack of progress for a while.

I was curious to see if I could get the sleeves to match, so I started at the beginning of an orange section for the cast-on edge on both and managed to get them pretty close. The next big debate was whether to have the pink/orange side or the yellow/brown side face forward. I like pink and orange better, so that's what faces to the front. The nice thing about this pattern is that the pieces are reversible, so if you don't like the color combo on the "RS" of the sleeve, you can flip it inside out, designate that the right side, and carry on your merry way.

I showed this to Boo when it was done and her response was...minimal, to say the least. She looked at it, looked at me, and wandered off to look for her animules. Hopefully she'll actually wear it this fall, and there's enough yarn left for a hat and mittens if she's really lucky.

Right. Lucky. Lucky in that she's short and her mother dresses her funny.

No fiber this Friday

Last weekend, I did something I've only done once in the last two years.

I folded up my spinning wheel and put it away.

There was a good reason. We were having company for dinner (and I try not to scare the Muggles too much if I can help it), the bobbins were empty, I wasn't going to have a chance to spin much before we left, and I didn't want to start something, take a two week break and come back to it. So the wheel is folded down in the gear/stash room, and I have no fiber to show off today.

Instead I will share another example of how I have corrupted my youngest child (in a good way, I promise). Devil has been at day camp for the last week and a half, so Boo and I have been hanging out together. One of the bonuses of just having one urchin to look after during the day has been getting out for some nice runs. Last week we went up to the Heath with some containers and our run lasted an hour, half of which was spent picking/running quality control on the wild blackberries.

This week, we spent one afternoon at the 1 o'clock centre in town, a wonderful London invention - a free play area for kids up to age 5. So there we were. I was sitting on a bench, zoning out a bit while Boo played with some animals. Next thing I know she comes zooming past me, pushing a small stroller crammed with a naked baby doll, a stuffed lemur, and a dinosaur.

"Mama! I running!" she said as she went by.

Fantastic.